


Feels Like the World Stopped Spinning

by Mrdogster



Series: And We All Keep Moving [2]
Category: The Halcyon (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Save them, anyway i meant to write something earlier but here were are, episode 7 is not my jam, i love them, it is in fact the opposite of my jam, these small children, yikes??????????
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 13:38:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9740690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mrdogster/pseuds/Mrdogster
Summary: There were a lot of "maybes" in Toby Hamilton's life, not the least of which was "maybe we could last"





	

**Author's Note:**

> back again, time to #suffer. almost titled "tried so hard and got so far" but i have more self restraint than that.

If things had been different, Toby and Adil would have made sense. 

Toby was a closed type of person. He talked very rarely about himself alone, mostly he talked about other people in relation to him. When he’d spoken about his father to Mr. O’Hara, he hadn’t thought it was a big deal. O’Hara would be gone in a week or two, and everything would be the same. Talking about his family was just a way to vent; he’d bottle up the rest of his feelings and hide them somewhere in his chest till he absolutely had to let them out again. This was his nature. This was who he was. He didn’t talk often to others, but when he did, he let everything roll off his tongue so quickly that sometimes he couldn’t keep track of what slipped out. 

Adil listened, hell, it was Adil’s job to listen. It was easy to talk to the bartender, because he was just some other guy. Sure, he was a little different. Adil wouldn’t be gone by next week or next month, but he was less consequential. When alcohol dulled Toby’s judgement, and some things spilled out that should have stayed deep inside, he didn’t have to worry about Adil ruining his reputation. 

Adil was the kind of guy who didn’t need to talk but could keep a secret better than you could imagine. Toby was the kind of person who didn’t want to talk but needed to, or else he’d explode. If things had been different, Toby and Adil would have had a real shot. But things weren’t different. And from their very beginning, they’d been together on borrowed time.  
*****  
At first when they’d gotten together, Toby felt… exposed. He was used to being the second best to Freddy, or the third wheel to him and Emma. He was used to being the person acknowledged after another: not expected to speak and not going to talk unless spoken to. It wasn’t exactly the best situation, but it certainly made being around people less of a formality. It was almost calming. Not being first meant that he could sit alone at a dinner party. It meant the peaceful isolation of a crowded bar. It meant that his amount of human interaction could be regulated, and he would choose how much he had to endure. This was what Toby was used to. With Adil, he had nothing like that.

Adil always kept conversation open, letting Toby talk if he liked but not necessarily forcing him to. It was something he’d surely picked up through bartending, leading a conversation but making it seem as though the other person was in control. Adil looked at Toby like what he said was worth something, and Toby didn’t know how to react. If Adil kept this up, Toby might end up talking about himself. He might end up saying something stupid or dumb or make a very big mistake and let some of those emotions in his chest out. Adil drew things out of him that he didn’t even know he could feel. Adil made him feel important.  
*****  
They’d been lying in bed late one night when he’d let it slip. They hadn’t been together long, and they hadn’t even really done anything with each other beyond a little making out. They were just lying there, face to face, tired but happy to finally see each other. Toby felt the words rising in his throat before he said them, felt his heart attempting to hammer its way out through this chest, felt the smoothness of Adil’s face as Toby pushed back a stray hair and he knew there was no way to stop it.

“I love you.” 

He’d said it quickly, in a rush of air, like he hadn’t really had time to process what he was going to say. The first things he felt were panic and fear. The next thing was simple anxiety. Inside him was the urge to run and deny the whole incident. There was the urge to kick Adil out and deny himself the feelings of love that he’d developed in their time together. There was the urge to cut out and close off, but he’d been burying his feelings all his life. If there was ever a time to indulge and let feelings grow, now was it.

Who knew how long they really had till all this inevitably came crashing in.

Adil was silent for a moment. He didn’t break eye contact, but for a second, it was like he wasn’t seeing Toby at all. For the briefest of moments, he was off inside his own head, and Toby was left waiting. Then all at once his eyes lost their glazed over look. Adil reached across the small gap between them and took Toby’s hand. 

“I love you too.”

And it was quiet then. Adil looked at Toby with eyes filled with happiness and everything was good. Adil squeezed Toby’s hand and everything was great. Toby leaned forward to kiss Adil with every emotion burning in his chest and everything was perfect. Nothing hurt and for the moment it felt like maybe everything would be okay. Maybe they could last. Maybe was far from certainly, but for the night, they were invincible.  
*****  
They should have been more careful. Even in the beginning, when they were both paranoid and scared, they were never quite as secretive as they could’ve been. There had been close calls. One time Toby left a mark _just _below where Adil’s collar ended. One time Adil had actually forgotten his watch in Toby’s room for the day and it came dangerously close to being found. They had their close calls, but while they were a little messy, they were still only close calls. This was so much more than that__

__Adil had helped Toby down from an anxiety attack more than once. When Toby had called him into the hallway from the bar, he knew that he was not going to be the calmest person in the world. Adil had always been the calm one, even since he was little. He was what held people together, even at their worst times. While he may have been bursting at the seams with anxiety, Toby had to be experiencing his feelings tenfold. Toby had never been collected: he worried and he thought too much and he didn’t know how to stop. Adil could be a rock when necessary. Adil would be his rock._ _

__The fact was, they could have been more secretive. The facts were, they had been a little less cautious as of late. Tensions had been running high and judgement had been running low. Nothing could be done about the past, but what could be controlled was how they handled the future._ _

Toby knew Adil would take the fall for him if he wanted him to. But he didn’t want him to, and h couldn’t let it happen. Adil was the most important person in the world, and having him take all the blame would ruin Toby. There had to be a way around this. There had to be.  
*****  
For a while after, things almost went back to normal. Toby still had Adil come to his room nearly every night, and Adil still came.They still kissed each other and held each other and were with each other in every way they could. They were closer than they had been because now, the idea of them not being together was very real and incredibly close. With the war going on before, the possibility of getting caught had felt so distant. With their brush with being found out so close, the need to enjoy each other as much as they could grew. Everything cooled off after a bit, and things were almost how they used to be: relaxed and full of pure joy. Almost.  
*****  
D’Abberville called Adil disgusting and Toby had never wanted to punch someone more. Even with his father had calling him a disappointment all those times, even with always being put down and shoved away, Toby had never felt such pure, unadulterated hatred towards one man. He couldn’t remember ever being this angry, not because D’Abberville had caused all his problems and not because he was the reason Toby was in this mess to begin with. Toby was angry because D’Abberville had the nerve to bring Adil up again and what he had with Adil was anything but disgusting. 

__Yes, Toby was angry with Adil, furious even. There were ways around what he did, ways to fix their problems without this betrayal. Toby may not know them at the moment, but there had to be ways. So of course he was angry, and frightened, and downright terrified. But even now, he knew that he still loved Adil, loved him more than he could possibly convey._ _

__Something about Adil had changed the very way Toby processed emotion, had turned him from a nice orderly ball of suppression into a cacophony of different feelings that he couldn’t begin to control. He had to pretend that he was happy for his mother. He had to pretend that he was excited that she was marrying the man who had very likely destroyed their life and reputation. But more than that, for the sake of the situation, he had to pretend that he didn’t love Adil, and that he had never felt anything for him. Letting his emotions out had been a quick mistake, but now he had the more impossible task of putting them back in._ _


End file.
